The 4 Secret Dangers Of Having A Pen Pal And Why You Need To Be Careful

Having a pen pal is a great way to learn about another country. Because you speak about everything you will get to know them very well.

Sooner or later you will become great friends. That’s the best thing about having a pen pal. There are other things that aren’t quite so nice. You have to be careful. It can also be quite dangerous. I don’t say this to scare you away from having one, but only to keep you safe. You need to be able to look out for yourself, so it’s in your best interests to know what can go wrong. Let’s go over them now so you’re prepared.

People lie about who they are

Sometimes you will find that someone makes up an entirely different life. They lie about their age, where they come from and a huge number of other crazy things people feel compelled to lie about. The biggest danger in this has to be adults who pretend to be a lot younger than they are so they can chat to children. If your child has a pen pal it’s very important you vet them properly. Always check what your child is reading, but also the stuff they are sending. Even if you’re an adult and someone is doing this to you, it’s not exactly what you want. You are not there to let someone live a fantasy life.

They could beg you for money

It’s quite easy to become attached to someone when you are telling each other everything about your life’s. Eventually you could become good friends and you will want to watch out for them. There’s a good chance whoever you speak to will come from a poor country. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that in itself. The problem is when people have only wanted a pen pal so they can trick some poor soul into being their friend, then they will start telling you their pet buffalo needs to go in for an operation. They will soon start begging you for money knowing you’ll feel sorry for them.

Watch out for blackmail

You tell each other everything, or you eventually will sooner or later. It’s because they are a good friend, plus they live on the other side of the world so who will ever find out your deepest and darkest secrets? Your pen pal might not have been entirely honest with you. Instead of wanting to learn more about your country, they will pretend to be friends with someone and extract their secrets to use as blackmail against them. Things like that wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago, but now with the Internet it would be very easy for them to cause you damage.

Don’t allow yourself to be brainwashed

Some people seem like a lot of fun in the beginning, but after a while you might notice something about them changes. They start acting a lot more negative and try to bring you down. By this time they are already your friend, so you feel like you can’t stop speaking to them. They might be playing games with you, but it’s just as likely they could be an unhappy person. After someone has been negative with you for a length of time it will affect the way you think. You might think you’re too strong for that, but you won’t even see it coming. It could easily affect your personality.

Don’t agree to visit them

It’s very easy to get caught up in the moment and think you have found a new friend. After you have been speaking for a while they could even suggest you visit them on holiday. It’s important you don’t consider it. Assuming they were a genuine person, it could be a really nice way to spend your vacation. But unfortunately it’s not worth the risk because anything could happen. Your safety is the most important thing, so don’t worry about disappointing anyone.

Daniel Acton is an avid tech blogger and loves sharing safety tips about making pals on the Web. He has immense knowledge on franking machine; to get more information on click on the link. You can also follow Daniel on Twitter.

Whilst I agree that you need to be careful online, I think that completely ruling out visiting your penpal is ridiculous.

There are many ways you can verify they are real – skype being one of them. Having someone you speak to and never really getting to know them in real life seems a bit pointless. Ignore the last point and meet up, just be careful about it and don’t make any naive mistakes. Not everyone in the world is a con artist..

I agree with you “Derp”. The article is nice to learn about the bad side of having a pen-pal or e-pal. But the world is not “that” bad! I have a few e-pals and pay-pals who actually became very good friends over time.

May be I was lucky enough to get some “real” friends. But as the article says, it’s better to keep an eye for “bad” guys/gals! 🙂